YouTube’s Emmy Breakthrough: ‘What We Do Is Not Webbys’ – The Ankler

There are many reasons Kareem Rahma is happy about his first-ever Emmy nomination, and why he and his SubwayTakes executive producer, Andrew Kuo, were drinking afternoon martinis when I caught them on the phone last week, a few hours after the nominations were announced. It’s the first nomination for a YouTube original series since the tech giant started aggressively pushing its shows for Emmys last year, a moment that Rahma called “a milestone for the entire creator community” in his official reaction statement. It’s also, very importantly for Rahma, not yet another Webby.  “What we do is not Webbys,” says Rahma, who has been nominated for three of the internet-focused awards. “It’s entertainment; it’s television. I want to be recognized by the right people.”  Alongside political song parodist Randy Rainbow, whose show has now been nominated six times in the short-form categories, Rahma is part of what feels like a slow-moving sea change at the Emmys, where entirely independent shows born on YouTube will become increasingly competitive with traditional Hollywood productions. Sure, Hot Ones and Royal Court didn’t manage to break through in the best variety series category, and many of the short-form nominees are still spinoffs from network-produced shows
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